November 10, 2024: Some things never change. Take Egypt and its continued domination of North Africa. For over 5,000 years, the Egyptian civilization has dominated North Africa. For most of that time the local religion was one based on worshiping multiple gods. Two thousand years ago Christianity took over and after six hundred years Islamic Arab armies invaded and enforced a multi generation effort to convert all these Christians to Moslems. That effort continues because five to ten percent of Egyptians remain Coptic Christians. The current government tolerates Copts as most foreign tourists are Christians and admire the way Egypt supports the continued existence of the Copts.

Egypt is less happy about the Tuaregs, a North African Berber group that dominated the region for over two thousand years until European colonial forces showed up in the early 19th century. The word Tuareg is translated as Free Men and that freedom comes at a cost. The Tuaregs continued to feud with their North African and sub-Saharan African neighbors. The colonial powers left most of Africa in the 1960s. This was bad for the Tuaregs who were outnumbered by the people of Niger, Mali, Algeria, Libya, and Burkina Faso, countries the Tuaregs used to dominate. The French colonial governments used the Tuaregs as their enforcers and this backfired on them when the French left and the newly independent governments of Niger, Mali, Algeria, Libya, and Burkina Faso sought to suppress Tuareg power in the region. This effort is still underway as Tuareg power and influence continues to decline.

The Tuaregs put up a fierce resistance to the French and were not defeated in Mali until 1905. There are currently about four million Tuaregs who live west of Egypt extending to Morocco on the Atlantic coast and south as far as in the Sahel as well as southern portions of the Sahara desert and south to nations like Mali and Nigeria. Recent DNA studies show that Tuaregs were present in southern Egypt over 3,000 years ago and some of these Tuareg invaders still exist in southern Egypt. .

As Egypt expands its influence in North Africa, it continues to bump into rebellious Tuaregs, who are not alone in opposing Egyptian influence, While Egypt has the largest economy in North Africa, the other 37 North African and Sahel states would rather get their imports from Europe and North America.

Egypt isn’t aggressive about using its status as the largest military and economic nation in the Maghreb (North Africa) and Sahel. Algeria and Morocco are nearly as powerful as Egypt but these three nations are not a threat to each other. Israel and Egypt, who share a common border, cooperate when dealing with local Islamic terrorists and Bedouin smugglers. The Bedouin are another curious minority that exist from the Arabian Peninsula into Egypt, Israel and North Africa. The Bedouin are entrepreneurial and currently dominate smuggling activities in areas where they are present. Bedouin are accommodating and willing to make deals. Egypt and Israel had problems with Islamic terrorists and the Bedouin helped out with that in return for reduced interference with their smuggling.

Bedouin tend to be loyal to the government of countries they live in. As a result there are Bedouin in the Israeli and Egyptian armed forces. One reason Egypt is the North African superpower is because they made peace with Israel in 1979 and have maintained that status ever since. This made it easy for Egypt to develop natural gas deposits that were first discovered in 1967. Back then Egypt was still at war with Israel and losing every time they fought the Israelis. This led to the 1979 peace deal that enabled both Egypt and Israel to peacefully develop their new natural gas fields. One Egyptian natural gas pipeline runs through Israeli territory.

Arab states still at war with Israel criticize Egypt for their cooperation with Israel. Egypt points out that they are not Arab and, aside from being invaded by Arab armies 1,300 years ago, generally stay out of Arab affairs. The other North African states also have some Arabs in residence, but do not act like Arabs. There is little Islamic terrorism in North Africa and a lot of economic ties to Europe, the United States and, to a lesser extent, Israel. Egyptian ties with the United States enabled the Egyptian army to obtain over a thousand M1 tanks, many of them built in Egypt under license. Egypt has access to many other modern American weapons, as well as arms salesmen from European nations. While Egyptian forces do not train with the Israelis, the Americans do and the United States continues to be a major supplier of military equipment to Egypt and Israel.